As appealing as it is to think of these people as low IQ, they aren't always.

For example, my dad's an engineer with a college degree and a high IQ and he's still bigoted against any minority group he can think of.

Well, that's why I say that I suspect that many conservatives have low EQ rather than low IQ. I'm sure many conservatives are quite proficient in math, business, and engineering - things which have nothing to do with social intelligence. In fact, I'm sure some conservatives are brilliant - I mean, it's quite genius to hold on to your riches by tricking the stupid, uneducated poor into thinking your greed is in their best interest.

The communists did it too.

Any form of political extremism is bad, and it's why I don't think libertarians have a leg to stand on ...how are they gonna lure all of the uneducated poor?

"Why yes, we stand for the legalization of drugs, the liberty of homosexual people, elitist intellectualism, and pretty much every other value the Democrats uphold that you guys hate....except now we're just gonna have you work for us, make it even more difficult for your children to attend college, and abolish the minimum wage. K?"

Can't see it happen, though they may recruit some of the wealthier liberal elite.

I've never fully grasped this whole American phrase of "drinking the kool-aid".

Anyone care to explain it?

Wikipedia article on cult leader Jim Jones who convinced his followers to commit mass suicide by drinking a toxin writes:

Deaths in Jonestown

Main article: Jonestown

Later that same day, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown,[89] 303 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around a pavilion.[90] This resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the September 11, 2001 attacks.[91] No video was taken during the mass suicide, though the FBI did recover a 45 minute audio recording of the suicide in progress.[92]

On that tape, Jones tells Temple members that the Soviet Union, with whom the Temple had been negotiating a potential exodus for months, would not take them after the Temple had murdered Ryan and four others at a nearby airstrip.[92] The reason given by Jones to commit suicide was consistent with his previously stated conspiracy theories of intelligence organizations allegedly conspiring against the Temple, that men would "parachute in here on us," "shoot some of our innocent babies" and "they'll torture our children, they'll torture some of our people here, they'll torture our seniors."[92] Parroting Jones' prior statements that hostile forces would convert captured children to fascism, one temple member states "the ones that they take captured, they're gonna just let them grow up and be dummies."[92]

Given that reasoning, Jones and several members argued that the group should commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape flavored Flavor Aid (often misidentified as Kool-Aid) along with a sedative.[92] One member, Christine Miller, dissents toward the beginning of the tape.[92] When members apparently cried, Jones counseled "Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity."[92] Jones can be heard saying, "Don't be afraid to die," that death is "just stepping over into another plane" and that "[death is] a friend."[92] At the end of the tape, Jones concludes: "We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."[92] According to escaping Temple members, children were given the drink first and families were told to lie down together.[93] Mass suicide had been previously discussed in simulated events called "White Nights" on a regular basis.[78][94] During at least one such prior White Night, members drank liquid that Jones falsely told them was poison.[78][94]
Jones was found dead in a deck chair with a gunshot wound to his head that Guyanese coroner Cyrill Mootoo stated was consistent with a self-inflicted gun wound.[95] However, Jones' son Stephan believes his father may have directed someone else to shoot him.[96] An autopsy of Jones' body also showed levels of the barbiturate Pentobarbital which may have been lethal to humans who had not developed physiological tolerance.[97] Jones' drug usage (including LSD and marijuana) was confirmed by his son, Stephan, and Jones' doctor in San Francisco.

*You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
*Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods.
C.S. Lewis

Then, you know, that whole crap like "rape jokes aren't funny" and my ENFJ sister is actually made *uncomfortable* by the show Family Guy because she said someone on that show clearly has repressed anger that they're turning into comedy...and I'm like, so what? Doesn't a lot of art, including comedy, begin as negative emotion, and isn't it healthy to channel it into art rather than being violent or a miserable person?

Family Guy is way overrated. Sure all the very taboo stuff that they try to make funny could be appreciated as an emotional statement, but I have no idea how it could be funny. It's doesn't mean that I'm overly traditional or something, it's just that I find half of the gags clever and half of them just gross.

Originally Posted by Marmie Dearest

Now that I think about it, this is probably what drags down the average IQ of the conservative side - all of these Republicans who are rabidly racist, sexist, hysterically religious, and anti-intellectual.

The Republican party would be nothing without them.

That is how the fiscal conservatives get poor, working class people on their side, btw...by appealing to their archaic, uneducated belief systems. Otherwise they might wise up.

This is kind of my theory too, but it is more like that these rabid conservatives are slightly more vocal than the rabid liberals and this leads to those who do not think for themselves to lean to the right.

Leading to such low-level pop-radical conservatives who just parrot stuff like:

teh obamination is a moooslim socialist

homosexels R gey

this is AMEREKA weee speek inglesh

It's a shame, since there are many brilliant convervatives that are covered up by the nonsense spouted by the clueless.

To be clear, there is a lot of nonsense spouted by the clueless radical liberals too.

Like "Nuhuh don't try to explain why you don't like gay marriage ur just a homophobe bigot in the closet"

But it is probably some of the convervative anti-intellectualism being spread that is tipping the IQs slightly to the liberals.

You know, I'm fully aware that it may be different in the states (or in say, political science degrees), but after going through undergrad and a couple years of grad school, I've pretty much never heard politics mentioned by a prof or by anyone at all associated with the university. Even indirectly. Let alone brainwashing. Why do you say that?

Things are different at least from my experience. Every History or Social Science teacher I've had in both high school and college was very obviously Democrat, even my Economics professor was openly Democrat. Working at a University for several years I've also witnessed some Natural Science professors which make their disdain for religion quite obvious. And people in the Fine Arts departments are the most obvious of all about their left political views.

On the other hand I never hear any faculty openly be pro-Republican or pro-Christian. It's not that they don't exist. It's that these comments are implicitly not welcome. A smart person doesn't rock the boat in that way. And that is where the bias is. Liberal opinions are welcome to be expressed, but conservative ones are not. I think that is the sort of thing that Noam Chomsky is talking about.

And for the record I'm left of center politically, but I'm more zealous about honesty than either political side. IQ at best measures your ability to succeed in an academic context (if that). So if you want to know why liberals have above average IQs, it's because people with high IQ's are most accepted in academia. And academia is very liberal. So people adopt the values of the group that accepts them.

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Things are different at least from my experience. Every History or Social Science teacher I've had in both high school and college was very obviously Democrat, even my Economics professor was openly Democrat. Working at a University for several years I've also witnessed some Natural Science professors which make their disdain for religion quite obvious. And people in the Fine Arts departments are the most obvious of all about their left political views.

On the other hand I never hear any faculty openly be pro-Republican or pro-Christian. It's not that they don't exist. It's that these comments are implicitly not welcome. A smart person doesn't rock the boat in that way. And that is where the bias is. Liberal opinions are welcome to be expressed, but conservative ones are not. I think that is the sort of thing that Noam Chomsky is talking about.

And for the record I'm left of center politically, but I'm more zealous about honesty than either political side. IQ at best measures your ability to succeed in an academic context (if that). So if you want to know why liberals have above average IQs, it's because people with high IQ's are most accepted in academia. And academia is very liberal. So people adopt the values of the group that accepts them.

I never experienced this bias, but even so, bias is a long way from brainwashing.

"We grow up thinking that﻿ beliefs are something to be proud of, but they're really nothing but opinions one refuses to reconsider. Beliefs are﻿ easy. The stronger your beliefs are, the less open you are to growth and wisdom, because "strength of belief" is only the intensity with which you resist questioning yourself. As soon as you are proud of﻿ a belief, as soon as you think it adds something to who you are, then you've made it a part of your ego."